Wednesday, April 30, 2014

New Doritos Jacked Test Flavors: 404, 855, 2653

Dear Doritos,

We all love trying new flavors of chips. In fact, this blog exists solely because of how much we like trying new flavors of things. But come on. For real. You're really gonna put out 3 new "test" flavors at the same time and put each in giant $2.50 bags (on sale) so I have to pay $7.50 to try 3 flavors that you're probably never gonna make again? I mean, we're all adults here. Let's be honest with each other. There's no way you're gonna make any of these. Have you ever made a test flavor into a legit, regular flavor? Yea, I didn't think so. You just want that quick $7.50 in curiosity money, then after a few weeks, these chips will disappear from the shelves forever, lasting only on food blogs and in the memories of people who had extra cash and hate money enough to try gimmick chips. If you were cool, you'd put 3 small bags of these in 1 big bag for $2.50 and you'd call them "3 Random Flavors We'll Never Make Again." But nope. You're not cool. You think Canada is the only country deserving of your long-forgotten-in-the-US BBQ or the absolutely fantastic Jalapeno Cheddar chips, and you'd rather get publicity in the US for making up random flavors than giving people what they want. And here I am, giving you that very publicity. Eat my shorts.

Sincerely, Mike

So anyway, as a food explorer and member of this almighty blog- bitterness aside, I had to try these chips. You probably shouldn't. Let's do it!

Test Flavor 404:

The smell of these kind of reminds me of the All Dressed chips Humpty Dumpty makes and Ruffles only has in Canada- that tangy, somewhat sour vinegary smell.

They're orangey brown, and they don't look appetizing.

they're also the size of my hand

These change flavor a lot. Initially, they taste like an oniony vinegar, then they kind of taste like what I imagine dry cat food tastes like, then they have an almost sweet tomato hint to them, then they taste like cardboard, then they taste kind of spicy, but not BBQ-hot spicy- instead, it's that chemical-like, almost wasabi-like sour spice. I honestly don't know what the hell I'm eating. Looking at the ingredients list, I see brown sugar, onion powder, garlic powder, lime juice solids (how is a juice solid?!) and orange juice solids. So these are onion and garlic brown sugar lime orange juice chips? Oh cool. Just what I've always wanted. I read somewhere that these may be an attempt at some sort of sweet onion Doritos, but although I'm no food scientist, I'm pretty sure sweet onion doesn't involve lime and orange juice. The more I type and the more I unfortunately eat, I'm noticing how strong the lime sting is at the end of these. Ughk.

the face of happiness

These suck, but at least you made my job easier, Doritos. F For Four 0 Four error.

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Stupid Test Flavor 855:

As expected, the bag is red for a reason. The chips are so red, they practically glow.

not shopped

Biting into these gigantic chips, and... BIG SHOCK! They're hot!

I'm not sure what these are supposed to be other than hot. As Doritos has put out just short of a billion flavors of chips that are hot, I think the only thing that might be different about these is a slight cheesy sour cream flavor I got at the beginning of my chewing journey. I almost think cream cheese, but sour cream is listed as an ingredient (along with everything hot you can think of). So maybe these are hot sauce and sour cream? Honestly, not a bad flavor idea, but in typical Doritos fashion, they're too hot to really enjoy unless you're one of those people who likes hot stuff enough that all your taste buds are melted off. These are the only ones I could see lasting of the 3, but the weird almost-too-creamy initial taste and some sort of milky aftertaste is pretty weird.

real mouth-too-hot drool

I'll give these a C, but only if you like hot chips. These create quite the burn after a few chips. For anyone else, steer clear.

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Bullshit Test Flavor 2653:

First off, am I supposed to believe that this is the 2,653rd flavor Doritos has created? Come on.

These bother me. They look wrong, and honestly, they smell like Irwin. Chips shouldn't smell like dogs.

WEEZ CHIPS

Check out the up close:

Right away, I taste chocolate, then maybe... maple? Apparently Doritos is trying out some sort of a dessert corn chip? I'm trying to not throw up.

so confused right now

I could see some (weird) people liking these, but their smell and the confusion of bad corn chips mixed with chocolate and other weird ingredients is honestly bothering me a little bit. Also, I ate these after the other ones, but I swear I'm getting a spice from these too. Spicy chocolate? COME ON.

Looking at the ingredients, a few stand out: brown sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa powder, skim milk (!?), garlic and onion powder again, paprika, chipotle chilli flavor (?!) and "bacon type flavor and natural smoke flavor." Soooooo... yea. Chocolate and sweet stuff mixed with bacon flavor, garlic, onion, paprika and chipotle. Now that I know those ingredients, these should actually be WAY worse than they are. I had a hard time eating many of these- the initial milky chocolate rush is almost not entirely disgusting, but the over-the-top corn crunch and the absolutely atrocious milky-while-spicy aftertaste is horrifying. I feel sick even describing these.

F.

I should fully disclose that I don't like Doritos Jacked chips very much. I tend to like thinner chips that can get nice and greasy and I can eat 4-10 of at a time. Even if I want a nice thick potato chip like Ruffles, I'm only gonna buy brands where the flavor sprinkled on the chips overrides the potato/corn flavor. Doritos Jacked is both more flavor (and honestly too much in most cases), and WAY more chip. The chips are just too big and too thick. I don't know anyone who eats chips and says "MAN, I WISH THESE WERE HARDER TO EAT!"
But even still, I've mostly enjoyed some of them. These, other than the hot ones, are pretty hard to like. If you can find the blue ones in a 99 cent bag, you should get them just for the experience of confusing your mouth. Otherwise, stay away.
They do have a contest though- go to boldflavorexperiment.com and vote on the one that doesn't make you throw up. You can win big money dollahs. I wish it was a contest to name them, cuz I already have a few ideas:

62 comments:

Why don't they just bring back the old school 4 cheese or even the nacho cheese ones from way back? Pizzareias from keeblar didn't survive because they were thick and too much flavor how do they expect this junk to stick around?

I still can't believe BBQ and Cheddar Jalapeno Doritos aren't available in the U.S.A. They're delicious! Reading this review wanting me to get a bag of one of those rather than eat those nasty flavours!

I sincerely thank you for this review. I was TERRIBLY tempted to purchase these last weekend, but decided to hold out until I read something on them. And now that I have, I thank you for your sacrifice.

Spot on dude, all 3 of these were exceptionally horrible. More especially, whatever they were trying to do with the blue ones (chocolate)...I could only eat two, and the second was more of "did I just taste that?...let me see...". Do yourself a flavor and stay far away from these.

It's funny but of all of them, the 2653 were the ones I liked most of all. They had a strange taste that I kept going back to. It wasn't chocolate, maybe some type of bean or something. Anyway, the aftertaste want too strong. I liked it simply because it didn't taste like Nacho Cheese or Ranch or the same chip we get from EVERY bag. Oh, and Sea Salt, don't wanna forget about all the Sea Salt chips...I mean, it's sea-salt...so it's healthier! Puke! War 2653! :)

Ok, I went back and I think there was a hint of chocolate in these. Hmm... The NEW Doritos TRIPPPS! Introducing our new BACON, CHOCOLATE, CHIPOTLE. "We're putting HIP back in the CHIP!" Ok, well, I'm a teacher not an ad-executive! :) BTW, cool site man!

Thanks for the reviews... I actually bought the blue ones and couldn't figure out wth I was eating after the first bite. Like chocolate bacon caramel or something... not in a good way. I am excited to try the red just because I really do enjoy spicy stuff... orange I think I will probably pass on. Nice blog man

Thanks for reviewing these. I'm glad they weren't regional and you could be as disgusted as I was... I only ate about half of each. The red was "good" with bean dip, but I don't know many cops that aren't (other than the other two flavors)

Hilarious. I bought the hot chips. I picked the blue bag up but thankfully goggled it before purchasing. As for the red bag, I even like spicy stuff and thought they were too hot. I didn't take much of anything besides spicy.

The 2653 Doritos are freaking awesome...no chocolate taste at all! The texture of these Doritos are different. They're bigger and have an awesome flavor. Since you thought these were awful, I'm going to try the other two....must mean they're great as well. I guess you would feel better if they tasted like a booger. LOL

So I wish I would have read this before I went a spent moneys on these nasty chips, seriously ideas on what to do with them? I can eat them, my kid threw up, and my husband with an iron tummy about died over a bucket, 3 chips were eat ten. We bought 404 and 2653 and only tried 404 and I am scared to try 2653 at all....now I'm left with gross chips. But I got a great laugh from your names. Thanks for the warning even though it was too late for us

All 3 of those chips are seriously Jacked and not in a good way. It's like they messed up and made a bunch of batches and are now selling them to recover the costs of them screwing up LOL. I don't like any of these 3 chips. I think Doritos needs to hire some new food scientists or hire me ;)

I tested all three flavors the other day (urp), and I think we agree somewhat on the flavors, but we disagree on the grades. Funny thing is, it never occurred to me to look at the ingredients list, so I went completely by instinct. Instead of going by the numbers, I'll just go by the colors.

Red: Definitely my favorite. You think this is "taste bud-melting" hot? Please. Doritos made taste bud-melting flavors a few years ago (1st, 2nd, and 3rd Degree Burn - the 1 and 3 were awesome, the 2 was meh). These barely register as spicy - about the same as Spicy Nacho Doritos. I also detected a sour cream flavor. Overall, I thought these were similar to the Enchilada Supreme flavor (which I believe is already a Jacked flavor), which I haven't seen in the stores for a while, so maybe they're bringing it back? Different color than the Enchilada Supreme though.

Yellow: I was thinking "Chili Lime". Now the lime is obvious, but it looks like both of us didn't notice it right away. The chili isn't obvious, and in fact it tastes nothing like chili to me. I only call it Chili Lime because it tastes exactly like Sweet and Spicy Chili Doritos (which, again, taste nothing like chili in my opinion) with a little lime added. These were pretty good, but not great. You might be right with the onion.

Blue: This took a while to figure out, although the chipotle was obvious to me right away. I knew there was something else going on, but I never figured it out (having never thought to look at the ingredients). So I ended up just calling them "Chipotle". Looking back now (the bag is long empty), I can maybe acknowledge the chocolate in my sense memory, but I never got any bacon out of it, and can't remember anything coming close to bacon.

The power of suggestion is strong - I'm glad I never looked at the ingredients, because I bet reading them would have caused me to taste things I couldn't taste. The only one that I liked well enough to say it should be added to the permanent line up is Red, but that already may be part of the line up as Enchilada Supreme. If they worked on the Blue (Chipotle) a bit, I might like it more. As for Yellow, while it's not a favorite, of the three, it actually may be the most marketable. I just happen to prefer spicy flavors.

As far as the Jalapeño Cheddar Doritos go, we are 100% in agreement. They need to bring those back.

The power of suggestion theory is true- some of these, I had no idea what they were, then reading the ingredients helped me figure it out. If nobody can figure out what flavors they are, Doritos did a piss poor job!I'm glad you agree with me on how good jalapeno cheddar doritos are, but you're CRAZY if you say that the red ones are the same as spicy nacho. Spicy nacho are probably my 3rd favorite chip ever and I regularly destroy half a bag at a time, and I couldn't eat more than 5 of these before I was in too much pain to continue! I'm a spice wimp, absolutely. But that's why I love spicy nacho! They're the right amount of spice!

I just bought the blue bag yesterday, HUGE MISTAKE. My guess is something like Mexican Hot Chocolate or Mole but regardless these are absolutely disgusting. I wish Doritos would bring back their Guacamole flavor...

The weird thing is that I really do not like chocolate at all, and therefore have no interest in chocolate mole as well. Yet I actually like the blue 2653. I think it's tasty and just enough spice by itself. Dipped into some cheese sauce, salsa, or even hummus though? It's pretty off the charts. The yellow one smelled/tasted exactly like the "texas steakhouse" seasoning I have at home for chicken... like exactly... not sure what that means. Need to find the red...

#2653 is Chocolate covered Bacon..... Like a play on the tradition pork belly and mole sauce.

review is entertaining and comical, but at least with 2653 your analysis is a bit off.

I haven't had the 404, but every review I've read points toward not eating them. Also, 855, you're pretty right on the money with your description. This pseudo Buffalo chicken dip kinda flavor is good but only for maybe a dozen chips then its just spicy.

Call me a sucker, but I saw the blue and silver bag and it caught my eye, so of course I bought them. I love chips, but had never seen or heard of these test chips. I have to tell you, I actually like these chips. As I was eating them I went to the computer and searched them and stumbled upon this blog. After reading all of the posts, I finished the bag. Have to say, they are good!! I guess I'm weird. I did not taste the chocolate, but the smoked paprika and chipotle, with a sweetness was at the front, and then pow! A subtle but vibrant heat hit the back of my tongue. Guys, this chip tastes so much like a lot of Cuban, Caribbean influenced dishes I've tasted. Liked the fact I could take two bites off of the same chip. Promise I don't work for the company, but I LIKE UM'!!! Great blog btw!

Yea, these seem to be very polarizing. People either love them or hate them. The one commonality seems to be that everyone tastes something different when eating them. Very odd chips. Thanks for reading!

404 reminds me a bit of Zapp's Voodoo (formerly Voodoo Gumbo) kettle chips, whose flavor Zapp's claims was created by an accidental spill that mixed up several flavors.. I like Zapp's Voodoo in modest doses, but I don't like 404 much at all.